Tings are unraveling in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's masterful trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a charged and tilted version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An invisible force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Authority is shifting from authorities, and gathering in the halls of theocrats, the treasuries of corporations, the grasp of mobs. "Something is at work, stealthily, gradually", says trader a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are faltering and giving way."
Core Enigma and Her Quest
Just what that force might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, by all accounts, the author's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the publication of the first trilogy. It's a realm whose geography corresponds to that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the humans appear and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in beast form; where the heavens are teeming with witches and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry luxury shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first introduced to as a child in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and determined protagonist of the prior volumes, but aged, more sorrowful, warier, less sure. This limitation is heightened by her division from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Interwoven Plots
The daemon's resolve to go off in pursuit of that childlike part of Lyra which she seems to have lost (an aspect which he epitomises as her "imagination"), and her mission to reunite with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque trek across Europe and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in play, and darker forces at work. The religious council – the faith's ruling body, and the author's masterfully eerie incarnation of strict, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's family member, who blames her for his sibling's death – has positioned himself into the position of president of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his fresh authority to expand the church's dominium. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby the heroine to security along a swollen river as an young boy in the first book, is now an academic with a additional duty in spycraft: he is dispatched to the city to learn more about Delamare's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious essential oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic crisis emanating out from that area. The extract is viewed by some as a tradeable product, by different parties as a research-based or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an insult that must be obliterated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is escalating in importance.
Similar to the original trilogy, our protagonist's decisions, and her destiny, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these storylines ran broadly in tandem. In this final book, they come together. Similar to the original series, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be deeply woven with the fate of the world. Her personal mission to reconnect with her soul and rediscover her creativity becomes the primary struggle in a wider battle with an controlling regime which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to stifle independence of thinking, creativity and expression: all the inner, resistant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Ideological Conflicts
The book opens with the discovery of a set of curious fissures in the fabric of the world's atmosphere: windows that seem to lead to alternate realities. A particular opening seems to be the point of the highly contested rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, labels these windows as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to destroy them. As Lyra begins to shift from strict reason and back to feeling, however, her certainty that these sites must be protected – that their meaning and what they provide is in some way crucial – increases. "Dust, or the substance, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we call it," she says, "we need it." The stage for a poetic conflict between naivety and maturity is set.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At a substantial length, The Rose Field|this volume|the
